Village Quire

When I got to the Globe, it was already quite full. I went up on the scaffolding balcony, which had been decorated with jam jar and tea light lanterns - there must have been a hundred and fifty of them, or more. The lighting was subdued - the Quire have clever little lights that clip on to their music books.
It was a Christmas theme, of course, with Phil Smith doing the readings from the pulpit (which he was sharing with a large Christmas tree), and the Quire singing some little known carols.
Well, mostly little known. One of the readings (I think it was from Laurie Lee) described a group of boys from the local church choir going out carol singing, and at the squire's house one of them suggested "Lets give them 'Wild Shepherds'!" So after the reading, the Quire sang 'Wild Shepherds'/While Shepherds Watch - but to an unfamiliar tune.
Two of the songs had been collected by Ella Leather, the Herefordshire folklorist, in Dilwyn, from a gypsy woman who she persuaded to sing into one of those ancient gramophones (state of the art technology then!) to record her voice on a wax cylinder - which was then sent off to Rafe Vaughan Williams to transcribe. "He arranged it," said the leader of the Quire, "and I un-arranged it, because what he did was quite hard!" And it was beautiful, as all the music of the evening was.
The encore, after rapturous applause, was Phil Smith performing the drunken bell ringer, describing how the bell ringing team spent their Christmas and New Year, and a song in Welsh.

The Village Quire now do CDs. I have one called High Days and Holidays along the Welsh Border Marches. There's one based around readings from Thomas Hardy, and the latest collection is The Holly Bears the Crown, which is the Christmas songs and readings. They can be found at www.villagequire.org.uk